The first draft that the Orioles undertook with Mike Elias as the general manager did not have any pitchers until the eighth round and had just two high school players drafted and signed across the team’s whole class. As the first overall pick, Adley Rutschman was the obvious headliner of the draft class, but it’s going to take success from the non-Rutschman picks to really add strength to the O’s farm system.
This is not an area where the Orioles have had success in recent years. Earlier in the week, The Baltimore Sun’s Jon Meoli observed that in this decade, the Orioles have had just two players picked outside of the first round who had a 2+ win season with the O’s.